Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Often used synonymously, the Blitz and the Battle of Britain are actually two
different phases of the Nazi air raids of 1940-1941. The Battle of Britain (June-Sept
1940) pitted Britain's Royal Air Force against German planes trying to soften up
Britain for a land-and-sea invasion. The Blitz (Sept 1940-May 1941) was Hitler's
punitive terror campaign against civilian London.
In the early days of World War II, the powerful, technologically superior Nazi
army quickly overran Poland, Belgium, and France. The British army hightailed it
out of France, crossing the English Channel from Dunkirk, and Britain hunkered
down, waiting to be invaded. Hitler bombed R.A.F. airfields while his ground
troops massed along the Channel. Britain was hopelessly outmatched, but Prime
Minister Winston Churchill vowed, “We shall fight on the beaches...We shall fight
in the fields and in the streets...We shall never surrender.”
Britain fought back. Though greatly outgunned, they had a new and secret
weapon—radar—that allowed them to get the jump on puzzled Nazi pilots. Speedy
Spitfires flown by a new breed of young pilots shot down 1,700 German planes.
By September of 1940, the German land invasion was called off, Britain counterat-
tacked with a daring raid on Berlin...and the Battle of Britain was won.
A frustrated Hitler retaliated with a series of punishing air raids on London it-
self, known as the Blitz. All through the fall, winter, and spring of 1940-1941, in-
cluding 57 consecutive nights, Hermann Göring's Luftwaffe pummeled a defense-
less London, killing 20,000 and leveling half the city (mostly from St. Paul's east-
ward). Residents took refuge deep in the Tube stations. From his Whitehall bunker,
Churchill made radio broadcasts exhorting his people to give their all, their “blood,
toil, sweat, and tears.”
Late in the war (1944-1945), Hitler ordered another round of terror-inducing
attacks on London (sometimes called the “second Blitz”) using car-sized V-1 and
V-2 bombs, an early type of cruise missile. But Britain's resolve had returned, the
United States had entered the fight, and the pendulum shifted. Churchill could say
that even if the empire lasted a thousand years, Britons would look back and say,
“This was their finest hour.”
Churchill's state funeral was held in 1965 at St. Paul's in a bittersweet remem-
brance of Britain's victory.
